Earlier quoted context omitted.
... except Italy
and spain
and Austria: https://fm4.orf.at/stories/3000031/
Ask HN: What happens next after a successful lockdown?
61–70 of 211 posts
Re: Ask HN: What happens next after a successful lockdown?
#62If social distancing can bring the number of cases down to a manageable level, you can switch to a traditional public health approach: Test anyone showing symptoms, and aggressively trace and test any contacts of known cases.
Wouldn't they be afraid that if the rules are relaxed the single cases would spiral up and start it all over again?
If you can identify the remaining cases and isolate them, you're fine. The danger is that some cases slip through the contact tracing procedure (e.g. the identified patient forgot about someone they were in contact with) which is why you also want to aggressively test anyone presenting with symptoms.
Re: Ask HN: What happens next after a successful lockdown?
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
Regarding immunity, there is evidence that such immunity (if it exists) is short-lived, and after a little while recovered individuals are susceptible to being infected again.
Do you have a reference for that as I keep hearing it repeated but I'm yet to see any real evidence for it.
Here's what Ralph Baric, an epidemiologist from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, had this to say on episode 591 of This Week in Virology[1] a couple of days ago:
Ralph Baric: "I saw some very interesting data from Stan Perlman the other day, who has been looking at serum neutralization titers of MERS patients from the Middle East kingdom of Saudi Arabia area and it's quite intersting that people peak fairly quickly with high neutralization titers but then they wane over the next year to almost background levels or just slightly above background levels by the second year, and with MERS there have been several reports of people who have seroconverted. They were rtPCR positive and their serum neutralizing titers and even ELISA titers went to almost zero within a few months."
Baric: "And it has not been studied and it should be studied, and this is the contemporary human Coronaviruses -- nobody knows how they maintain themselves in human populations. They don't undergo rapid antigenic variation like influenza. There's not 115 common cold or corona virus type genotypes or whatever they're called, serotypes. Sorry Vincent, I just butchered the coronaviruses."
Vincent Racaniello: "That's ok."
Baric: "So one hypothesis is that they cause a transient protective immune response that wanes quickly and then they can reinfect and cause mild upper-respiratory tract infections and that's how they maintain themselves. So it is quite possible.. there's been a number now of reported cases in China of SARS2 infections where people were documented to be infected and recovered. They were rtPCR negative. They went home and they became reinfected a month later or so."
Baric: "In this case the United States has sufficient cases that we can actually track the serologic responses of the individuals and their general immune.. both B- and T-cell responses after infection and we can get a handle on the long term immunity that may be elicited after infection."
[1] - http://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-591/
[2] - about 15 minutes and 50 seconds in to the program
Re: Ask HN: What happens next after a successful lockdown?
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
I saw a statistical analysis of the flatten the curve idea but assuming we couldn't ramp up the number of intensive care beds, it took 3600 days to fit everyone in under the "available health care" line. It's still a good strategy for right now because it gives us some extra time to ramp testing and healthcare up.
Was this the article you were reading with the 3600 days analysis? I just read it. Not sure what to make of it yet. https://medium.com/@joschabach/flattening-the-curve-is-a-dea...
The "Containment works" part seems questionable. In particular, South Korea almost certainly wasn't "tracking its first 30 cases very well, until patient 31 infected over 1000 others on a church congregation". Patient 31 didn't have any known source of exposure - she hadn't travelled abroad or had any contact with known cases, didn't even meet South Korea's criteria for testing, the most likely place she got Covid-19 is from the congregation. There was an entire thousand-person cluster that had slipped through the net and only got spotted because one person happened to get in a car accident and the doctors tested her on a hunch despite not meeting their testing criteria.
If things had gone slightly differently, it's entirely possible that we'd be pointing at Italy as an example of successful containment that South Korea should have followed. They tested and contact-traced and thought they were doing quite well for the first 30 or so cases too, but reality hit them once it was far too late to do anything.
Re: Ask HN: What happens next after a successful lockdown?
#65I thought this interview was illuminating for post-lockdown life in China https://twitter.com/MikeIsaac/status/1238604080571772928?s=2... It shows just how far behind we are. TLDW: Temperature checks everywhere. Fever clinics optimized for quarantining the potentially infected. China is trying to actually contain the virus. The only way out for us unless we significantly ramp up testing and lockdown is to admit defea…
So, the uk approach? Let god sort them out?
Re: Ask HN: What happens next after a successful lockdown?
#66One word... Summer.. once the summer starts and we see 30c or above , i think the spread will be limited and the quarantine might end. But, worrying part is what comes next, without a Vaccine, coming Winter might be lethal, and we may end up with same cycle.. https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3074131/coro...
It's summer in Australia and South Africa. They're still seeing spread. I wouldn't count on that.
Re: Ask HN: What happens next after a successful lockdown?
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because it's too late. The time for that in the US was at least two weeks ago. This is why the US response to this has been driving so many of us crazy. The later you respond the fewer options you have.
The original question was what to do post-lockdown. To be clear, lockdown is the only option for the US right now. But then what?
Wait until the rest of the world catches up with you, else they'll reinfect you as soon as lockdown ends.
Re: Ask HN: What happens next after a successful lockdown?
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
... except Italy
Then what's the difference between total quarantine and major lockdown?
Id assume, that the differences between minor lockdown, major lockdown and total lockdown (quarantine) are the same as for minor/major/total in every other context too. Minor x = a small quantity of all possible x, major x = a large quantity of all possible x, total x = all of all possible x. X in the given context would then be something like "measures to achieve isolation (on different levels) to decrease infection rate".
Practical example: Minor lockdown could be shutting down public places and canceling events that attract large crowds (>1000 people). Major lockdown could be shutting down all public places and closing borders. Total lockdown would be complete isolation of all individual people, as far as possible, for example via curfews and special protocols like for example (as they did in China) mailmen dropping packages on the doorstep instead of handing them over to you, and similar protocol changes to avoid direct contact between people. — And these three steps are in fact exactly what has been done or is in the process of being implemented right now in many countries.
Re: Ask HN: What happens next after a successful lockdown?
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The only way out for us unless we significantly ramp up testing and lockdown is to admit defeat and simply optimize for slowing down the onslaught. This has already happened. “Flatten the curve” takes it as written that most people will be exposed to the virus, and thus aims instead to just spread those exposures over a long enough period to avoid overwhelming the health care system.
I saw a statistical analysis of the flatten the curve idea but assuming we couldn't ramp up the number of intensive care beds, it took 3600 days to fit everyone in under the "available health care" line. It's still a good strategy for right now because it gives us some extra time to ramp testing and healthcare up.
The more optimistic way of looking at this is: the 'flatten the curve' scenario has to get so close to R0 This is difficult, not impossible. We'll see what actually happens.
Re: Ask HN: What happens next after a successful lockdown?
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The only way out for us unless we significantly ramp up testing and lockdown is to admit defeat and simply optimize for slowing down the onslaught. This has already happened. “Flatten the curve” takes it as written that most people will be exposed to the virus, and thus aims instead to just spread those exposures over a long enough period to avoid overwhelming the health care system.
I saw a statistical analysis of the flatten the curve idea but assuming we couldn't ramp up the number of intensive care beds, it took 3600 days to fit everyone in under the "available health care" line. It's still a good strategy for right now because it gives us some extra time to ramp testing and healthcare up.
We'll have vaccine within the 3600 days -- I hope :)